Netflix Greenlights Feral With Michelle Dockery and Jessica Gunning

Netflix has officially greenlit Feral, a seven-episode jungle survival drama led by Jessica Gunning and Michelle Dockery, with Genevieve O’Reilly, Quintessa Swindell and Dolly de Leon joining the ensemble, Deadline reported Oct. 6. The series adapts Shirley Conran’s 1987 novel Savages and follows four very different women who accompany their mining-executive husbands on a corporate holiday to a beautiful but lethal tropical island — then must survive the jungle and each other after the men’s shady deals put everyone in danger.

Gunning plays Annie, Dockery is Julia, O’Reilly is Silvana, Swindell is Suzy and de Leon is Elena, Deadline and Variety both confirmed. Production is due to begin in Australia later this year. Creator Jude Mack wrote the hour-long episodes and executive produces alongside director Emma Freeman, Hera Pictures’ Liza Marshall and Bria Thomas, and Warner Bros. International Television Production’s Hamish Lewis and David Belshaw; Laurie Borg serves as series producer.

Mack billed the show as “a wild, messy journey of self-discovery” and said it is “a complete dream to be carrying Shirley Conran’s torch alongside Hera and Netflix,” adding that audiences will meet “funny, brutal, bold women.” Marshall said Netflix has “wholeheartedly embraced the scale and ambition of the show” and called Freeman “the perfect director to take us on the ride,” language that also appears in Netflix Tudum’s Oct. 8 cast announcement.

Gunning remains closely associated with her Emmy-winning turn as Martha in Netflix’s Baby Reindeer; Dockery is best known as Lady Mary in Downton Abbey and has recent credits including Godless and Anatomy of a Scandal. O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma work across Star Wars — including Andor — and Swindell’s turns in Prime Target and Black Adam round out a cast Netflix is positioning for both prestige drama and survival-thriller marketing. No release date has been announced.

Netflix Tudum framed the greenlight around Conran’s bestseller and the question of whether the four leads can put aside differences, self-doubts and vanities to stay alive. The combination of a classic airport-read IP, a female-led ensemble and Australian location shooting puts Feral in the same broad Netflix lane as high-concept limited dramas that travel globally without relying on a pre-existing streaming franchise.

Deadline’s Oct. 6 report also sketched the representatives behind the new leads — United Agents and WME among Dockery’s team, RGM and United Agents for O’Reilly, Gersh for Swindell and de Leon — a casting-desk detail that usually accompanies a locked series order. Variety’s matching Oct. 6 piece independently confirmed the same four lead names, de Leon’s supporting role, the Australia shoot window and Hera Pictures’ Marshall quote, giving the greenlight two major trade confirmations on the same day before Tudum’s Oct. 8 consumer-facing write-up. Together the trades and Tudum leave little ambiguity: Feral is an ordered seven-episode Netflix drama based on Conran’s novel, not a pitch still shopping for a home.

Survival dramas with all-female ensembles have tested well for streamers when the tone mixes dark comedy and peril, a lane Gunning’s Baby Reindeer fame and Dockery’s period-prestige profile can stretch in opposite directions. If Freeman’s Australian shoot lands the island scale Marshall described, Netflix will have another global English-language original built on literary IP and a contained cast.

For studio-watchers, the project also underscores Hera Pictures’ continuing pipeline of literary adaptations for streamers after prior prestige partnerships. With filming set to start before year-end and a seven-episode order already locked, Feral is one of the clearer new Netflix drama greenlights of early October 2026. More streaming and studio coverage is on our Studio page.

Verification: Netflix greenlight, seven episodes, Gunning/Dockery/O’Reilly/Swindell/de Leon roles, Conran Savages premise, Australia production, Mack/Freeman/Hera/WBITVP producers and quotes from Deadline (Oct. 6, 2026) and Variety (Oct. 6, 2026); Tudum cast/plot confirmation from Netflix Tudum (Oct. 8, 2026).